And still Carlita did not move. She lay there staring up at him, as if
some intoxicant had got into her veins, paralyzing motion and emotion.
She was not conscious of sensation, and yet she saw the light of
unutterable happiness in his eyes, and understood it perfectly.
He put out his hand and clasped hers with reverent devotion. His lips
moved, and she heard him whisper:
"Thank God! my darling, I know that you are mine at last!"
His lips touched the pink palm as it lay upturned in his, then, with
a shiver of returning consciousness she realized that the others were
coming upon deck.
She rose swiftly, nervously.
"Let us go back at once--at once!" she exclaimed, hoarsely. "I--I think
I am--ill!"
But, for all the assurance of illness, she went hastily toward the
others and greeted them with almost hysterical lightness.
Leith looked after her in some surprise, then an indulgent smile
flitted over his handsome mouth.
"Poor little girl!" he murmured. "She is trying to be so loyal to
Olney, and Heaven knows I admire her for it! Perhaps I should be less
generous if I were not so sure that she never loved him. God bless her,
my beautiful one!"
He went below and gave the order to the captain, then returned to his
guests on deck.
The wind had grown very fresh, with the usual variableness of late
March, and they soon found it necessary to go below; but, even there
the greater part of their pleasure was over, for the yacht was pitching
considerably as the force of the wind and waves increased.
Leith observed that Carlita was nervous almost to the border of
hysteria; and to cover her condition from the others, he sat down to
the piano and tried to play; but the effort met with no great degree of
success, and he turned upon the stool and monopolized the conversation
for a time.
He observed, too, that a sort of constrained silence had fallen upon
Dudley Maltby, and that he looked toward Jessica with a curious
expression, which faltered and fell as her eyes were cast in his
direction.
"Halloo!" muttered Leith, below his breath. "Has that poor little devil
been getting his wings singed? I wonder what the little Chalmers is
up to now? Poor Dud! He is really too good a fellow to get under that
domination. I wish to the Lord I had not asked him."
And then before his soliloquy was ended, he heard young Maltby say to
her softly:
"Come into the library. There is a book I want to show you."
The look she cast upon him was not lost upon Leith.
"Good heavens!" he muttered. "What has the poor chap done? She's not in
love with him, that's certain, but that she has got it in for him for
some reason is equally certain."
But he could not follow, even if he had so desired, as Mrs. Chalmers
was addressing some questions to him; but he saw Jessica stagger
against her young cavalier as the yacht lurched, saw him place his arm
about her, and then--they disappeared.
Had he been able to penetrate behind that portière, he might have seen
the wretched boy holding her hands in an impassioned clasp, his eyes
strained and blood-shot as he gazed into her smiling ones.
"It is utter folly, utter madness," he was saying. "I can't give you
up. I tell you I love you. Pouf! How empty the word sounds. I feel like
a man drunk with opium in your presence. Jessica, you must be my wife!"
She smiled daintily, charmingly.
"Your wife!" she exclaimed, lightly. "You can't mean that, when you
once said that it was as much as a man's reputation was worth to be
seen in my box at the opera."
He dropped her hands and flushed crimson.
"How do you know that I did?" he inquired doggedly; then, as he
realized that he had practically acknowledged the truth of her
statement, he cried passionately: "I was the greatest cad under heaven,
and I am willing to give the lie to my words by making you my wife in
face of all the world. Jessica, I love you! Will you not listen to me?"
"Even if I were willing to forgive you, think of the folly of it all,"
she said, laughing at his earnestness. "You know the terms of your
father's will. You would have less than ten thousand a year if I became
your wife."
The poor imbecile did not pause to inquire how she had found that out
but cried eagerly:
"But surely that would be enough. It would not be what we have been
accustomed to, but with love at the helm, surely we could steer our
little craft!"
She laughed aloud lightly, but still not without a certain fascination.
"Oh, Dudley!" she exclaimed, "you are not a nineteenth-century boy
at all. You belong to mediæval times, and have been born at least a
hundred years too late. Come and let us go back to the others. This
yacht is pitching dreadfully. We have quite a sea on, and I am not the
best sailor that ever lived, by any means. Oh, I say, come off! You are
a magnificent Knight of the Doleful Countenance. Do you want to give
away to all those people the nonsense you have been saying to me? Now
smile and look happy, like a good boy. Just try to imagine that I have
made you every promise you can possibly desire. Who knows but that I
may, some day?"
He took heart from her chaff and returned with her to the others,
because he felt that he could persuade her to remain no longer.
Leith, Colonel Washburn and Mrs. Chalmers were carrying on a heated
discussion, while Carlita sat apart at a table looking listlessly
through a book of engravings, not a subject of which could she have
told a moment later.
"Do you think we are going down?" asked Jessica, lightly, as she joined
them. "It would be too disastrous a termination to our charming day."
"Not much danger, I fancy," replied Leith; "though it has grown too
rough to be pleasant. It is rather tempting the fates to venture out at
this season."
"Oh, but how perfect the day has been!"
"But for the wind, the evening would have been more so. We shall not
be late getting in, however. The captain assures me we shall be at the
pier by nine o'clock."
"It will be rather dangerous landing in the dory, won't it?" asked
Colonel Washburn, who was old enough to think of his personal comfort
above all else.
"The tide will be high enough for us to go up to the pier," replied
Leith. "We are due there just about the change."
"That's luck," somebody murmured.
But it seemed to Carlita that the time would never pass. The day had
been so short, so piteously short, and those hours of the evening so
endless! It seemed to her that she would have given all the world for
five minutes alone, and yet she dared not leave them, knowing that
Leith would follow her.
Even yet she had not confessed to herself the awful secret that was
harrowing her soul, and there before them all she dared not think.
It seemed to her that the happiest moment of her life was when some one
announced the fact that they had arrived at the pier, and Leith came to
conduct her on shore.
But for the wind, the night would have been magnificent. The moon was
full, the cold, white rays glinting over the waves in soft, almost
phantom beauty.
Out in the stream were numbers of vessels buffeting the wind and tide,
which was at rapid ebb, and on either side the twin cities lay, their
lights twinkling like millions of brilliant stars.
Leith stepped upon the pier and lifted Carlita beside him. Then, as
the others would have followed, the shrill scream of a childish voice
reached them, swept by the wind from the end of the pier, a cry that
sounded like the death-call of some wild bird of the forest:
"Papa! papa! I've waited almost an hour, and mamma is dying! They
sent--"
But the end of the sentence was never reached. There was a splash, and
then:
"Good God!" exclaimed a man upon the end of the pier. "He's fallen
over."
Quicker than thought both Leith and Carlita had dashed forward just in
time to see the tiny dark form swept out by the cruel tide, his little
head just visible above the crest of the wave.
Singularly enough, none of the men upon the yacht seemed to have heard
the scream, and not a hand was extended toward the boats.
And yet there was not an instant to lose.
"The boat; quick, captain!" Leith shouted hoarsely. "A child overboard!"
But the wind seemed to sweep the voice away down the stream instead of
toward the lurching craft.
The small head was nothing but a speck now in the moonlight, and then
it disappeared altogether.
Before any one could realize it, there was another splash, and Carlita
knew the next moment that Leith's coat and vest were lying at her feet,
that Leith himself had already gone in pursuit of that drowning child;
and then a woman's shriek rose wild and clear upon the night air.
She bent forward eagerly, and distinctly heard the man next her exclaim:
"Take care, lady, or you'll be over next!"
But what cared she?
She was watching the dark head in the moonlight, watching the progress
he was making, saw the small speck beyond as it arose again to the
surface, and then--who can compute time in instants like that--she
knew that Leith had seized the child!
Already he had turned again, and was coming toward the pier, but wind
and tide were too strong against him.
An agony of wild, intolerable fear arose in her heart. She knew nothing
of what was going on around her, further than the knowledge that
centered in the danger of those two, and that, she realized with a
horrible anguish that was past all understanding.
She saw him struggling, struggling, saw the white face lifted in the
moonlight as if beseeching assistance; and once more her voice rang out
clear as a liquid bell under her ghastly fear:
"A thousand dollars--five thousand dollars to the man that saves his
life!"
But already the boat was launched, and, as her last words fell upon
their ears, it shot out from under the end of the pier and made
straight toward the hapless pair.